Bonds and Baker: a fitting enshrinement

Updated 6:46 pm, Friday, May 8, 2015

Dusty Baker (left) and Barry Bonds will enter the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame together on Monday night.

Dusty Baker (left) and Barry Bonds will enter the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame together on Monday night.

Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle

Bonds and Baker: a fitting enshrinement

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It will be an evening of sweetness and light — and for a couple of men craving to escape the shadows, that will be a very fine thing. Dusty Baker and Barry Bondsrepresent the baseball wing of Monday night’s inductions into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, fittingly enshrined together.

Given the honor of writing the inscription for Baker’s plaque, I came to realize his true place in history. He fell short on qualifying for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, although by not a landslide (if you witnessed his prime). As a manager, he didn’t get that World Series title he so badly desired. But how many men were so excellent at both playing and managing?

If you’re talking about the modern era, it’s a very short list

Before World War II, it was common for storied players to become managers. John McGraw, Frank Chance, Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby, Bill Terry, Frankie Frisch and Mickey Cochraneall managed at least one World Series champion. In modern times — since the mid-’30s, to be accurate — only Joe Torre(batting champion, six-time World Series manager) can match Baker’s combined reputation.

Baker was the soul and conscience of the great Dodgers teams of the late 1970s and early ’80s, fitting comfortably in any group photo of elite-level National League outfielders, including Andre Dawson, Dave Parker, George Foster and Dave Winfield. He was a bad-ass, if you’ll pardon the expression, as a hitter, leader and force of nature if things went haywire.

He won three Manager of the Year awards (only Tony La Russa and Bobby Coxwon more, with four) and left an indelible mark on three franchises. His Cincinnati Reds reached the postseason in 2010 for the first time in 15 years. He’s the only Chicago Cubs manager to win a postseason series since 1908. Aside from his 2002 Giants giving San Francisco a World Series appearance for only the second time in 40 years, his 103-win team in 1993 represented the club’s highest win total since 1905.

None of this will capture the essence of Monday night’s tribute at the Westin St. Francis. Baker’s most lasting impressions are all about class, bravery, personal relations, a connoisseur’s taste and a worldly nature that finds him comfortable in any company. It will be all about Dusty as a man, surely worthy of thunderous applause.

Many cuts above

As for Bonds, hey, at least one Hall of Fame has the good sense to include him.

So much nonsense fills the air about Bonds’ role in the steroid era, it’s apparent that people have no idea how his essential baseball instincts rivaled those of his godfather and idol, Willie Mays.

“Best hitter I’ve ever seen,” said Mike Krukow, who grew up watching the likes of Mays and Henry Aaron. “Because I don’t think there’s ever been a hitter that on given nights has only been given one pitch to hit. And he never missed it. How you do that, going a week to 10 days getting walked so often, I have no idea.

“No matter what the location, whatever speed he got, if it came into the strike zone, he was gonna square it up. To me, that is the definitive genius of Barry Bonds. Nobody’s ever done that like he did.”

Krukow’s broadcasting partner, Duane Kuiper, recalled that Bonds often sat between them on longer flights. “This one particular trip to Atlanta, Greg Madduxwas scheduled to pitch the first game,” Kuiper said. “He tells us, 'These are the first seven pitches he’s gonna throw me, and to these locations.’ I’m thinking, yeah, right. But he nailed it. Game starts and those first seven pitches came down exactly as he’d said.

“So many times, he knew what was coming. Not because a guy was making a mistake, or he held the ball funny, or maybe he’d just faced the guy many times. He just knew what was coming. Genius.”

Tom, you’ll be fine

So now everyone’s up in arms about the “scandal” of deflated footballs and the “destruction” of Tom Brady’s legacy. What a joke. Nobody’s going to remember a controversy that amounted to nothing. His legacy is totally intact. In the words of former colleague Ray Ratto, “The Patriots got caught doing something underhanded, which in the NFL is known by the phrase 'game preparation.’” ... That’s how it goes with these things. Mays and Mickey Mantlewere banned from baseball — that’s correct — in 1979 for having taken jobs with Atlantic City casinos, not to be pardoned for six years. It was a horribly overblown issue, and nobody remembers that, either ... Something you don’t see every day, in the Cleveland-Chicago NBA series: The Bulls’ Joakim Noah shoots free throws like a man tossing bales of hay ... So Floyd Mayweatheris calling Manny Pacquiaoa “coward.” Pretty hilarious stuff from a man known for abusing women and who stood by while his paranoid sycophants barred two renowned female reporters (Rachel Nicholsand Michelle Beadle) from covering last Saturday’s fight because they dared to call him out for domestic violence ... Sepp Blatter, that odious gasbag who runs international soccer, has been a blight on the women’s game for decades, recently denying their request for an authentic World Cup playing surface (“You’ll play on turf and like it”) and generally acting like the guy on “Mad Men” who respects Joan only for her breasts. Now Blatter, 79, is calling himself “the godfather of women’s soccer.” Wow. If you picture a banquet for some major event, Blatter is the guy who breaks repulsive wind, excuses himself because he pushed a little too hard, then trips over an ant and goes sprawling into the casserole, dousing several guests with noodles and cream sauce.